IBM says its new chip is one of the most efficient yet. Using seaweed to 3D-print buildings. AI companies are staring down the laws of economics. Why investors should pay attention to nature. All that and more in this week’s Prototype. To get it in your inbox, sign up here.

I’m sure it’s not news to anyone reading this newsletter that energy has become a major concern for the tech world, as data center buildouts and surging AI demand have massively increased electricity demand for servers.

IBM suggests it may be able to help reduce some of that energy demand. It announced a new advance enabling the company to pack nearly 100 billion transistors into a tiny chip, which it claims can provide up to 50% more performance or 70% greater efficiency than the 2nm node chips it announced in 2021. The nodes on this chip, it says, are the equivalent of 0.7nm nodes, taking chips past nanotech and into angstromtech (to possibly coin a phrase).

“It’s not just an incremental step, it’s a meaningful leap forward,” IBM’s Jay Gambetta said at a media briefing this week.

It’s worth noting that the chip itself does not have transistors that are physically that small. That’s (probably) impossible. Instead, it has a 3D architecture, called NanoStack, that produces the computing equivalent of a chip with nodes that size. The transistors are stacked on top of one another in a staggered layout in order to maximize the number that can be placed on a single chip.

Crucially, IBM says that its chips could provide a 40% improvement in scaling SRAM (Static Random Access Memory), a technology increasingly being used for different types of AI applications because it puts computer memory physically closer to where data is being computed, speeding up processing. “This is a step change the industry hasn’t seen in decades,” Gambetta said.

Don’t expect to see these chips in data centers anytime soon, though. IBM itself doesn’t manufacture chips, instead licensing its technology to other semiconductor companies, such as Japan’s Rapidus, which is bringing IBM’s 2nm tech to market next year. At the press briefing, IBM’s Huiming Bu told reporters they expect the new chip to be ready for production within about five years.

Discovery of the Week: Seaweed Could Help Turn Dirt Into Buildings

From apartment buildings in Europe to Texas neighborhoods, 3D-printed construction is increasingly common. Now that it’s proven successful, scientists are searching for lower-carbon building materials that are more practical for construction. One promising prospect has been dirt, because, after all, it’s everywhere. But........

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